what about parasites?

 Hi Beth!  We have a cow question.

Coming out of winter, our milk cows is looking pretty rough.  Her hair is patchy and she's losing the long hairs on her backbone at her tail and shoulders.  I thought it might be lice or something and I did do a pour on a couple weeks ago (I called a local vet and he recommended that for a lactating cow) and that's what I had available, but her coat is rough and her tail is mucky again.  

She had a mucky tail about four weeks ago and I gave her minced garlic and a little diatomaceous earth in a couple cups of oats then and that seemed to help.  So I tried to do that again this week, but now that she's on grass, she won't eat the oats so I can't get her to eat the garlic.  Do you have any other recommendations or should I just give it a few more weeks and hope that as the good grass comes in and she's out on clean pasture it'll clear up?

Everything I read says to give her a wormer and I will if I need to, but it's so hard to find good holistic advice.  You're my go-to for that :)

Let me know your thoughts?  Thanks so much for your encouragement.  

In other news, I convinced my cousin to get a milk cow! She found a nice Jersey first calf heifer near her and so we've been texting back and forth with all of her questions.  I'm so thankful to have had you and Shawn (and your book!! I told her to get it and she's loving it!).

Hi!  These questions are all great.  This is how we'll change the world -- one cow at a time.  So glad to hear your cousin is now a cow milker too.  

So, first the coat.  Her coat condition sounds perfectly normal for right now.  My cows look the same!  I'm not worried about lice because I can't see any, and when their coats are thin like this -- especially around the neck, face, and tail/hip bones -- you can easily see right down to the skin, which, while rather bare, doesn't look irritated or oozy.  I'm not an expert, but my experience tells me that what I'm seeing is normal shedding off for spring.  The cows have good appetites, give good milk, stretch when they get up, and sport around the pasture when brought back for milking -- all pretty incontrovertible signs of good health.  They're putting on weight, too -- one good place to notice this is the thickness of the base of their neck/top of the spine as you look down on them.  If you don't already run a brush over her when you put her in the stanchion for milking, you might start doing that; it's good for her coat and skin, and helps her shed off, and she likes it, plus it gives you more experience of her coat and skin condition, and that will boost your confidence.

Mucky tail.  Well, this time of year, going out on grass, you may see some muck on a tail and all it could mean is the cow has the squirts.  Is it mucky for a few days, or several weeks?  and does the muck coat the tail thickly, like multiple coats of glue, or is it more like she didn't get it out of the way when she was defecating one time?  When I see balled up muck at the top of the tail -- over a period of time, not just a thin coat for a few days -- that's when I wonder if the animal needs help regulating her passengers.  A cow's gut is home to a lot of critters, and most of them are only 'parasites' when their numbers get out of balance.

Wormer.  Well, you know I don't worm, for two reasons.  The second would be the one you just described:  a grass cow on good grass doesn't want treats, and won't eat the bait.  The more important one, though, is that it's the cow's job to worm herself, and on a good mixed pasture with plenty of forbs she should do it just fine.  For example:  although she won't take your garlic, she's probably gorging herself on the onion grass in your pasture, right?  Our cows always do that in spring, and I think it's part of their spring tonic.  They know their plants really well, and if winter grazing for any reason let them build up more little pals than they need (parasites are symbiotes until there are too many of them), they know how to reduce their numbers.

One suggestion would be to make sure in the course of her grazing that she gets to sample several different areas on the farm --  the middle of the pasture, the fence row, the woods' edge, creek bank, etc.  I don't mean all in one day, just over the course of several days of grazing.  This lets her choose from a much larger assortment of plants for self-regulation.

Watch what she eats -- it's always instructive to see which plants a grazing animal chooses to eat, and at what times.  Watch what she avoids, too.  She won't eat near her own species' manure until it's completely broken down (or until poor management means she has to eat it or starve).  That's nature's way of avoiding her getting that overload of gut passengers we were talking about.  For the past couple of days, my cow Delphinium is eating a lot of flowering dandelion.  Bitter stuff!  probably full of glycoalkaloids, one of the compounds with which holistically grazed livestock -- as well as wild animals -- regulate their gut.  In the summer when they are grazing along the woods' edge, my cows will eat small amounts of white snakeroot -- toxic in large doses, but medicinal in trace amounts -- and our cows know it.

Raising all-grass dairy is

Hope this helps!

Happy Easter --

 Beth